October 1, 2008 at 12:20 pm · Filed under Stuff
(I know, I’ve posted a lot lately. It’s my turn for internet [until tomorrow], so I’m upping a backlog of stuff while I can!)
It’s funny how the most menial or otherwise-insignificant tasks (as in; tasks that, were I living in any other place and time but here and now, would be trivial) can make me feel so accomplished. Today I’ve:
- Been first Master to Assembly (granted this is true for every weekday; it’s at 6:45am I would like to add!)
- Taught class. Detoured from ICT for half an hour in the direction of World History. (It’s a great story, if a little shocking. Ask me later.)
- Gone to market (see previous entry)
- Finally done (some of) this week’s laundry (rain began to fall out of a CLEAR SKY as I hung the last piece. It was awesome.)
- Put beans to soak for tomorrow’s cooking. (I always forget and end up missing lunch and having lupper at 3pm)
- Glutted thoroughly on PB & Banana sandwiches (with powdered milk-milk on the side)
- Finished the work I started yesterday - now have a (rough) week-by-week outline of this term, along with a few skeleton lesson plans for each week. It will help me 1) stick with the syllabus, and 2) remember where, when, and how I want to deviate from syllabus (which is to say… a lot)
- Put class rosters and grading sheets into a spreadsheet. Organizing is fun!
In any case, I think I’m posting this because at the moment I am really in a good mood. For no specific reason at all, but having actual classes to teach helps. Feeling usefully accomplished (small-small) does wonders for a Type-A psyche. Also, after talking to my mom (Hi Mom!) today, I realized that my last few entries have been somehow less-than-perky. My intentions with blogging this Journey were never to give the day-by-day run down of Life As a PCV offered by so many other Peace Corps blogs (not that I’m knocking them at all, that’s just not completely why I’m doing this). Neither was it to offer sugar-coated pseudo-introspective reviews. Rather (oh heck, why am I doing this again?!), I wanted a way to track myself as I learned from and grew out of whatever I experience in the next 27 23 months, and not all of my paper-journal entries need be privatized. I’m sharing with You, dearest, as my family or friends of various stripes - all of whom I love and respect enough to want input from (be it commiserative, remonstrative, bored-ative, whatever).
Nevertheless, I don’t want to give the impression that I’m sitting around here moping day after day, so I thought I should offer relief from only posting the lower (not necessarily lesser) side of my experiences. I’m actually enjoying myself. I give myself a solid 70:30 ratio of content-warm-fuzzy vs. woeful-despondent-hopeless days. Considering the horrors I sometimes hear from my training group-mates, I think I’m doing pretty well. I know I’m “spoiled” as far as site placement goes (Beach Corps = winnar), and my school is definitely upper-echelon as PCV-schools go. There’s a lot of crap to take, but there’s a lot of good interspersed. I’m surrounded by a lot of people, and have no privacy — but a lot of the people I’m in contact with are good people, and privacy can be found in the strangest of places (I take super-long bucket baths, for instance). There are women in my market who dash me bananas before I even ask to buy some. There are security guards at the gate to my school who hit on me and ask me point-blank to “join them in bed” - but there is also a guard who strolled with his little boy to campus after dinner, just to make sure I locked the door when my housemate was out of town. There are teachers who ignore my contributions and exclude me from conversations solely because of my sex, who have no interest in my presence as a coworker at all - but there are also teachers who wake up early to get to my door by 5:30am, on the chance I want to go running with them, because they know I would go anyway and they want a non-sleazy situation in which to offer friendship outside of school. There are countless strangers who chant Obruni kokoo maa che, (etc) taunts every time I walk past - and there are toothless old ladies who offer me minerals (soda) every time I pass their house, and say they are trying to “spoil me to never leave Ghana”. Most incredibly: there are motivated teachers at this school. There are motivated students in my classrooms. Not many, but enough. There is vast potential for growth and change — not just outside of my ego’s orbit, either. I’m happy. I’m blessed. I’m still here.
Be still, and know that I am God.
That’s something I’ve been doing a lot of this month (I mentioned it a few posts back). It’s good advice, that I’ve found precious hard to follow for an indefinite amount of time. If you look it up, though (hint: Psalm 46), read the entire chapter: I really like David’s description of the Untame Lion I follow. It’s nice to remember there are countless facets of unfathomable intricacy to my God: there’s a lot more to things than a half-asleep Tame One holding a checklist, keeping score. Actually… I think there will be more on that in a future entry. Oddly, I need to be less-perky to hash out what I want to say about that topic. Stay tuned.
September 28, 2008 at 2:16 pm · Filed under Stuff
Saturday, 27 September 2008
Today marked the third (fourth?) “official” occasion of what is becoming a weekly ritual for me: every Saturday, I go to Cape Coast, head for the Beach, and spend a few hours letting the wind blow the cobwebs out of my soul.
Mind you, the beach itself is a rocky, dirty, foul and polluted territory, and has little in common with the tourist-and-tanning-oil drenched, salt-white sands of the Gulf Coast back home. Children (and more than a few adults) have no qualms about using the beach for their own personal latrine (even today I saw, or tried not to see, a kid perpetuating that truth). Trash and …other things… litters the beach; suffice to say it’s not a place to toss a towel and umbrella for a sunning session. So I don’t actually go onto the beach itself. Instead, I go to Castle Beach Restaurant, which - astoundingly - is adjacent to Cape Coast Castle, and situated on the beach. It’s a wide open, stilt-built affair, with solid wooden floors slick with constant damp. It’s definitely intended primarily for tourists and outsiders, as the location and menu both attest, but I’ve seen equal parts Obruni and Ghanaian patrons. Generally speaking, though, the beach-facing section is left remarkably empty on Saturday mornings - a few locals might troop through, but never stay long. Hungover tourists don’t stumble in until noon-ish, and when they do, most head away from the wind and wet and towards more sheltered tables.
“My” table faces the beach, with nothing to obstruct the view - or the airflow - but a wooden railing. Thanks to Castle Restaurant’s elevation, most of the less-savoury aspects of the beach are substantially dampened. The breeze is constant, the atmosphere is deliciously unobtrusive, and the drinks are reasonably priced. More importantly: I can sit and think and read, and nobody bothers me. I can bring in outside food and drink and the staff overlooks it (granted, they know I’ll eventually buy something anyway). I can sit for hours and not be hustled. I’m waited on but not catered to. I’m respected as a customer but not as false royalty. I know full well how lucky I am, and I the fact that I really am a Spoiled Volunteer doesn’t escape me at all. It’s glorious.
I arrive with full bag, armed and ready for Serious Business. Book, iPod, notebook & pens, matches & cigarettes, an impulse buy of two oranges from my walk up the street. The staff knows my face. They greet me and follow me to my corner, asking where “my Brother” is, and whether I’ll want a drink now or later. I’m predictable, and it’s easy enough to recognize returning Obruni faces, but it still gives me warm fuzzies to be remembered. I told M (my neighbour PCV; the “Brother”) that this is Ghana’s Cheers, only with more beach and less laughtrack.
It’s absolutely worthless to write this all up, as the only thing conveyed will be a shadow of reality, but I wish wish wish that somehow I could transfer the contentment I find in my Saturday morning beach-flavoured hours to you. It’s a moment out of time, of relaxation and calm, of being and not doing, of sensory satisfaction and simple pleasures. I usually feel that I’m doing precious little here, if measured against the lofty standards I originally painted onto myself before arrival. Being, though, is utterly exhausting, cliched though that may sound. To understand the peace I find Saturdays, sitting at that rickety-crickety-slimy-grimy table in the corner of Castle Beach, you’d have to understand the emotions that wash in with my personal tides throughout the week. I want to write of those too, to explain and convey and transport a complete sense of place - but even that only comes out with a hollow ring.
There have been times this month where I’ve contented myself with groundnut paste peanut butter and tea for days on end (boo hoo, poor suffering volunteer that I am, a thousand tiny violins weep for me), because it’s too mentally exhausting to go to market for anything more substantial. I shake my head and struggle to understand so many actions that surround me daily - I find them illogical, and fight to quell the urge to Change Things. My Obruni-Barbie smile hangs by the door, to be donned before leaving home every morning. I laugh off the marriage proposals (standard fare, and only half-jokingly offered), too-personal questions (my age is none of your business, neither is my virginity), corrections and arguments (even though it’s not the Ghanaian way, I promise that my way of [cooking, shopping, walking, breathing] does work!), friendly teasing and less-friendly heckling (Newsflash: I understand a lot more Twi than you think) as a matter of course, because if I didn’t I’d have no time or energy to devote to anything else. And then, come Friday evening, as I look forward to the next day’s mental vacation, I’m exhausted by my own senses of bitterness and unfulfillment: what, really, have I done this week to merit such a reward?
And in the end, as I struggle to relate it all, to help you comprehend: I still come up short.
And maybe too, also in the end, the reason for that is that I am still struggling to comprehend. I’m disillusioned and content, depressed and at peace, busy to exhaustion and bored to tears, alternately regretful and excited. I’m thrashing and fighting against the world and against myself. Through it all, though, I’m trying: to be quiet, to hear, to look, to see, to Be Still and Know. And so it goes.
